DIRK
DžENTLI

● There
is no point in using the word "impossible"
to describe
something that has clearly happened. (338 likes)

● The
door was the way to… to… The
Door was The Way. Good. Capital letters were always the best way of
dealing
with things you
didn't have a good answer to. (98 likes)

● The
more Susan waited, the more the
doorbell didn't ring. Or the phone. (48 likes)

●
In the great debate that has raged for
centuries about what happens to you after death, one thing has never
been in
doubt - that you would at least know the answer when you were dead. (30
likes)

●
Believe me, it is a great deal better
to find cast-iron proof that you're innocent than to languish in a cell
hoping
that the police - who already think you're guilty - will find it for
you. (25
likes)

●
Gordon Way's astonishment at being
suddenly shot dead was nothing compared to his astonishment at what
happened
next. (25 likes)

●
He felt like an old sponge steeped in
paraffin and left in the sun to dry. (21 likes)

●
The seat received him in a loose and
distant kind of way, like an aunt who disapproves of the last fifteen
years of
your life (...) (20 likes)

●
"Yes it is", said the
Professor. "Wait...", he motioned to Richard, who was about to go out
again and investigate – "Let it be. It won't be long."

Richard
stared in disbelief: "You say there's a horse in your bathroom, and all
you can do is stand there naming Beatles songs?" (24 likes)

●
Unfortunately this Electric Monk had
developed a fault, and had started to believe all kinds of things, more
or less
at random. It was even beginning to believe things they'd have
difficulty
believing in Salt Lake City. (15 likes)

● He
turned slowly like a fridge door opening.
(12 likes)

●
Sunlight played along the River Cam.
People in punts happily shouted at each other to fuck off. Thin natural
scientists who had spent months locked away in their rooms growing
white and
fishlike, emerged blinking into the light. Couples walking along the
bank got
so excited about the general wonderfulness of it all that they had to
pop
inside for an hour. (7 likes)

● I live
in what are known as hopes. I
hope for fascinating and remunerative cases, my secretary hopes that I
will pay
her, her landlord hopes that she will produce some rent, the
Electricity Board
hopes that he will settle their bill, and so on. I find it a
wonderfully
optimistic way of life. (1 likes)

●
Yes, it is true that sometimes
unusually intelligent and sensitive children can appear to be stupid.
But
stupid children can sometimes appear to be stupid as well. I think
that's
something you might have to consider. (88 likes)

●
The walls were painted in almost
precisely

that shade of green which Rafaello Sanzio would have bitten
off his
own right hand at the wrist rather than use. (55 likes)

● She
had heard it said that humans are
supposed only to use about a tenth of their brains, and that no one was
really
clear what the other nine tenths were for, but she had certainly never
heard it
suggested that they were used for storing penguins. (53 likes)

●
Nobody got murdered before lunch. But
nobody. People weren't up to it. You needed a good lunch to get both
the
blood-sugar and blood-lust levels up. (48 likes)

●
Dennis Hutch had stepped up into the top seat when its founder
had died of a lethal overdose of brick wall, taken while under the
influence of
a Ferrari and a bottle of tequila. (43 likes)

●
Dirk turned on the car wipers, which
grumbled because they didn't have quite enough rain to wipe away, so he
turned
them off again. Rain quickly speckled the windscreen. He turned on the
wipers
again, but they still refused to feel that the exercise was worthwhile,
and
scraped and squeaked in protest. (23 likes)

● Ok, I
don't like to disturb you at
what I know must be a difficult and distressing time for you, but I
need to
know first of all if you actually realize that this is a difficult and
distressing time for you. (21 likes)

● He had
a tremendous propensity for
getting lost when driving. This was largely because of his method of
"Zen" navigation, which was simply to find any car that looked as if
it knew where it was going and follow it. The results were more often
surprising than successful, but he felt it was worth it for the sake of
the few
occasions when it was both. (12 likes)

● When
the girl sitting at the next
table looked away from a moment, Dirk leaned over and took her coffee.
He knew
that he was perfectly safe doing this because she would simply not be
able to
believe that this had happened. (8 likes)

● - No
private detective looks like a
private detective. That's one of the first rules of private detection.

- But if
no private detective looks like a
private detective, how does a private detective know what it is he's
supposed
not to look like? Seems to me there's a problem there. (4 likes)

● The
Great Zaganza said: "You are
very fat and stupid and persistently wear a ridiculous hat which you
should be
ashamed of. (4 likes)

●
The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on
the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90
million
miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of
how
skewed our perspective tends to be. (3937 likes)

●
A learning experience is one of those
things that says: "You know that thing you just did? Don't do that."
(2694 likes)

●
I've come up with a set of rules that
describe our reactions to technologies:

1.
Anything that is in the world when yo're born
is normal
and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2.
Anything that's invented between when you're 15
and 35 is new
and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you're 35 is
against the natural order of things. (727 likes)

● "For
Children: You will need to
know the difference between Friday and a fried egg. It's quite a simple
difference, but an important one. Friday comes at the end of the week,
where as
a fried egg comes out of a chicken. Like most things, of course, it
isn't quite
that simple. The fried egg isn't properly a fried egg until it's been
put in a
frying pan and fried. This is something you wouldn't do to a Friday, of
course,
though you might do it on a Friday. You can also fry eggs on a
Thursday, if you
like, or on a cooker. It's all rather complicated, but it makes a kind
of sense
if you think about it for a while." (197 likes)

● "Why?"
is always the most
difficult question to answer. You know where you are when someone asks
you
"What's the time?" or "When was the battle of 1066?" or
"How do these seatbelts work that go tight when you slam the brakes on,
Daddy?" The answers are easy and are, respectively, "Seven-thirty in
the evening", "Ten-fifteen in the morning", and "Don't ask
stupid questions." (97 likes)

● He was
constantly reminded of how
startlingly different a place the world was when viewed from a point
only three
feet to the left. (11 likes)

● I have
always been absurdly, ridiculously
tall. To give you an idea- when we went on school trips to Interesting
and
Improving Places, the form-master wouldn't say: "Meet under the clock
tower," or "Meet under the War Memorial," but "Meet under
Adams." (10
likes)

● The
hotel shop only had two decent
books, and I'd written both of them (4 likes)